Saturday, February 05, 2011

Think about this. We borrow money we don't have from communist China and autocratic, misogynistic Saudi Arabia, and then give it to one of the wealthier countries in the world. And we don't just give it to Israel. We give a roughly equivalent amount to Arab dictatorships at the same time.

Every year - for decades - we've given billions of dollars to totalitarian military dictatorships in Egypt and elsewhere.

Our grandchildren will be sending checks to China and Saudi Arabia to pay off the guns the Egyptian government is currently using on its citizens, who are protesting for basic democratic freedoms and human rights.

This is crazy, but not new.

In the 1950s, Britain was concerned that the secular, democratically-elected prime minister of Iran was going to cut off the unfair oil siphoning Britain had imposed on Iran when occupying it after WWII. Britain convinced Eisenhower to allow the CIA to instigate a coup. The CIA actually overthrew a popularly elected democratic leader of another country. They replaced him with the Shah. The Shah was a brutal, autocratic dictator, but he was on "our side." We gave him money and weapons, and he tortured his subjects. The Iranians hated him so much they eventually rebelled and overthrew him. Unfortunately, they replaced him with the guys running the show now. Everyone ended up worse out of that deal.

The main differences between what Saddam did to Kuwait and what he did to Iran were 1) We didn't like Iran, 2) We supported his war against Iran, and 3) he didn't use chemical weapons on Kuwait. Saddam used a border dispute as a pretext for both wars. With Iran, we gave him money and weapons. When he invaded Kuwait, we pounced on him during the First Gulf War.

After the end of hostilities, we then instituted economic sanctions against Iraq. Keep in mind that sanctions are really an act of war. They work the same way sieges did during the Middle Ages - by creating starvation and disease. These sanctions killed half a million Iraqi children. Madeline Albright, Clinton's Secretary of State, admitted this on 60 Minutes, and claimed all these children's deaths were "worth it". Check it out for yourself.

Also, as a result of the First Gulf War, and in order to create a buffer against Saddam, we built up a huge military presence in Saudi Arabia. Another autocratic dictatorship which is way worse to women than Iraq or Iran.

Those two things inspired bin Laden to create Al-Qaeda, and ultimately carry out the September 11 attacks. Since then, we've spent trillions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of foreign lives, tens of thousands of American limbs, thousands of American lives, and a decade fighting two hopeless wars.